Medi-Evil 2

by Paul Finch

  “Mr. Kaplain,” Harry shouted, clinging to the driver’s bench, “there’s something I should tell you. I … I don’t much like to fight. I never have.”

  “Well lad … sometimes you’ve got to.”

  Harry nodded and clung on all the tighter and, to his astonishment, was handed the reins. He clutched them as hard as he could. The dock-front was close, but at this rate the team would gallop straight over it and into the sea. “How … how many will there be?” he asked.

  “Never counted more than ten,” Kaplain replied, breaking the volley gun over his knee and inserting the big, brass-ended cartridges. “But we’ve already done for two of ’em. Keep your eyes open.”

  Harry did - all the way to their destination. Kaplain grabbed the reins at the last moment, and pulled the horses up directly in front of the gunsmith’s shop. The animals stopped smartly, steam billowing from their quivering flanks. They snorted and pawed the ground.

  Both man and boy gazed up at the old brick building. It was cloaked in darkness, not a sound audible from inside. This gave Harry brief hope that their fears might be unfounded, but Kaplain simply handed him the pistol. Harry stared down at it. As he’d first surmised it was an ancient piece, a muzzle-loader, and it had seen much action. Its stock was scored and pitted, its iron furniture black with powder-burn.

  “Don’t worry,” Kaplain said, “she’ll shoot. Just be careful. There’s a tight coil on that trigger. She’ll go off at the slightest touch. Come on.” He jumped down.

  “Are we sure they’re even here?”

  “We’re sure.”

  Kaplain placed an ear to the front door. There was still no sound that Harry could hear. Surely there’d be screams, shouts? He watched worriedly from the driver’s bench. Eventually Kaplain glanced around at him.

  “You have a key, I take it? Or do I need to kick this thing down?”

  Harry climbed to the road, fumbling under his waistcoat. “I’ve got a key. We must do as little damage as possible.”

  Kaplain chuckled at that. As they swung the door open, his chuckle became a raucous laugh.

  Harry cringed, wanting to chide him about waking the neighbours, about waking Mrs. Martha. If Kaplain was concerned, he didn’t show it.

  “Mer-men!” he bellowed, “I’ve arrived!”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Harry whispered. But no sooner had he uttered these fateful words than he spotted two amorphous shapes gambolling forward through the dimness of the shop. Their fish-market stench was horribly familiar.

  Kaplain laughed again and, almost casually, aimed his volley gun over the boy’s shoulder, before discharging all six barrels at the same time. The crash in Harry’s ear was numbing, the muzzle-flash searing. The two intruders were hurled back with sledgehammer force, their heads and bodies torn and blasted and riddled with shot.

  “I love this gun!” Kaplain shouted, eagerly reloading. “Get in there, boy … find the rest of them.”

  Obediently, with the pistol hilt moist in his hand, Harry ventured forward. Even after what he’d just witnessed, it was still a shock to see the wreckage of furniture. He reached the foot of the stairs and glanced up, listening intently. Was that stealthy movement he could hear up there; something slithering along the upper landing?

  Or was it down here – much closer to him?

  Harry turned to his left just as a stinking fish-shape flung itself onto him. It happened so quickly that he was unable to cry out. Its huge, dank weight bore him backwards across the passage and into another door, which gave way beneath them. The next thing Harry knew he was falling heavily down the spiral stair to the workshop, its sharp metal treads brutalising his body and limbs.

  All the way down, over and over and over, the monstrous creature clung to him, its fetid breath ripe in his face. He pummelled it with the pistol, hacking blows into its body and head – to no apparent effect. But just as they reached the bottom, the pistol fired – with a furious but muffled bang. Harry felt the monster go limp against him. When they came to a rest on the paved floor, a cold, oily fluid was seeping into his clothes.

  Gagging, he kicked the thing off him and scrambled to his feet. The amphibian lay still, a shapeless mass in the gloom.

  Then something moved elsewhere in the workshop.

  Harry spun around. The room was too dark for him to see clearly, but at its farthest end an even darker patch suggested that the door to the undercroft was open. Harry knew that it shouldn’t be. He dug into his pocket for more cartridges, straining his eyes to scan the blackness. There was so much cluttered shadow that it was impossible to make out anything distinctive, but he knew that he wasn’t alone. Another of the amphibians was present, and it was crawling towards him – he could sense it. If he could just reload in time, but his hands were too slick with blood and sweat to hold onto his ammunition. He drew handfuls of cartridges from his pockets, but succeeded only in scattering them on the floor. There was another sound in the workshop, a rustle - like rotted netting or old sailcloth. And it was very close. In fact, it was almost upon him. Abruptly, Harry’s courage failed. He made a dash for the spiral stair, but was tackled mid-way and driven backwards into a wall of shelving, from which tools and boxes of nuts and screws deluged him.

  Again, the apprentice hammered on his assailant with the pistol, but this brute was even burlier and stronger than the previous one, and its great webbed hands had already clasped his throat.

  “Ka …” Harry choked. “Kaplai …”

  But wherever Kaplain was, he didn’t hear.

  By inches, Harry’s life was being squeezed out of him. Even as he realised this, the thing pressed its face up close, mesmerising him with its sheer abyssal hideousness: the spiny, bony ridges, the barnacle warts, the wide luminous eyes.

  The eyes! Of course!

  Harry went for its unprotected eyes, both his thumbs plunging hard into vitreous pulp.

  The monster gave what could only be described as a shriek of the deep – a gargling cry, pitched at such tone and volume that Harry had to clap his hands to his ears. In the rooms above, window panes cracked and glassware exploded.

  The monster lurched backwards from the boy, and in so doing tripped and fell over its slain compatriot. Panting and sorely bruised, Harry saw his opportunity and took it. Fumbling along the nearest shelf, he came up with a heavy wood-chisel. Its blade was thick, but honed at its diagonal tip to razor sharpness. He raised it high and threw himself on top of the amphibian, stabbing repeatedly and with all his strength. He landed maybe twenty blows before exhaustion overtook him. At least half of them had penetrated clean through the monster’s cupped hands, plunging deep into its already ruined face. By the time Harry had dragged himself away, the creature was already twisted with the stiffness of death. A dark, sluggish pool spread slowly around it.

  Harry fell to his hands and knees, sobbing. Again he wanted to vomit, but there was nothing left in his gut. From somewhere above came the thunderous boom of Kaplain’s volley gun and a roar of manic laughter. The boy clambered wearily to his feet. Clearly the fight wasn’t over yet. He retrieved as many spilled bullets as he could, reloading and cocking his pistol, before taking a deep breath – and venturing back up the stair.

  The first thing he saw at the top was the open door to the parlour, and moonlight flooding through its mullioned windows. He approached and glanced inside. An amphibian lay dead across Mrs. Martha’s central table. The wallpaper behind it was stained with trickling blood and peppered by shot. By Harry’s reckoning, this was seven of the enemy accounted for. Victory could be close.

  Another harsh laugh distracted him.

  Kaplain.

  It sounded as if the seaman was outside somewhere, possibly at the building’s rear. Pistol at the ready, Harry crept through the darkness into the kitchen and thence to the scullery. As he’d suspected, the building’s back door stood ajar. He peeked out into the yard. One more corpse greeted him there. Again it was a mer-man. This one had been
decapitated, probably by Kaplain’s cutlass. It lay in a glistening lake of its own gore. About three feet away, neatly severed, sat its squat, hairless head.

  Harry moved on into the yard. From what he could see in the moonlight, the gate was wide open. He could still hear Kaplain’s cruel laugh, though it now sounded farther away. Perhaps the seaman had pursued the remaining creatures out into the network of squalid alleys? That might prove dangerous even though he was armed with the volley gun. Harry hurried to the gate, but only when it was almost too late did he hear a stealthy slap of bare feet behind him. He turned smartly, but, as before, was unprepared for the swiftness of his assailant. This one had leaped down from somewhere above – a bedroom window, maybe Mrs. Martha’s bedroom window! – and now faced him from a low crouch. Harry raised his pistol, but this creature was armed with a spear, which it launched at him with bewildering speed. Harry’s finger was on the trigger when his left arm was pierced clean through, slammed back against the woodwork of the gate-jamb and transfixed there.

  He just managed to fire, hitting the monster and flinging it to the ground, before an agony so vast it seemed to fill his entire being burst from his mouth in a shrill screech. For seconds he flopped there like a pinned fish. His wounded limb shot blinding streaks of pain through his whole body. When he was finally able to look, he saw that it was not actually a spear that had struck him – but a trident.

  Each of its prongs was tipped with a wide, flat arrowhead, and it was the central one of these that had passed through his elbow-joint and now held him fast. By the skewed posture of his arm, the bones, and probably the nerves alongside them, had been sheared. When Harry tried to waggle the fingers on that hand, there was no response. He might have howled again – this time with despair, had a scraping sound not caught his attention.

  He gazed back at the amphibian. Hadn’t he shot it? He was sure he’d emptied his pistol straight into it. But plainly he’d only winged it, for, clutching its left side, it had now hunkered up into a sitting position. Its pale eyes fixed on him, and then it turned its head towards the row of dustbins. A second elapsed, before it rose to full height and hobbled gingerly towards them. Harry hung there watching, fascinated and perplexed – though very quickly the monster’s intent became obvious. Wheezing with pain, it grabbed up the nearest bin, tipped out the rubbish, and raised it above its head.

  The boy struggled to free himself, but the slightest motion sent shards of crucifying agony through his body. He cried out for Kaplain, but again got no response. Breathing hoarsely, leaving huge bloody footprints behind it, the thing staggered forward, its bulky silhouette blotting out the stars. The bin it hefted might be old and corroded, but it was still solid enough to crumple Harry’s skull. Harry screwed his eyes closed, praying that it might be over quickly but suspecting that it wouldn’t?

  How long would it actually take to be beaten to death? How many savage blows would make contact before merciful oblivion took the pain away?

  A shot rang out.

  Harry’s eyes snapped open again.

  Hardly daring to breathe, he watched the amphibian totter slowly backwards. The bin slid from its grasp and clattered down onto its own head, before pitching to the flagstones and rolling away. The monstrosity held a rigid posture, regarding the boy icily. Then it exhaled, a sickly gruel of blood and mucus frothing from its nostrils, before slumping down into a lifeless heap. Behind it, shivering but defiant, stood Mrs. Martha. She was in her nightwear. One hand clasped the ends of her shawl to her breast, but the other held her small pocket-flintlock. Its barrel still smoked.

  *

  It took fifteen minutes for the woman to free the boy from the trident. When she did, boiling water and a poultice had to be applied speedily lest he bleed to death. By the time this operation was complete, a full half-hour had passed – but there was still no sign of Kaplain. Mrs. Martha was not so concerned, though Harry, half delirious with shock, insisted they search for him. Hadn’t the tough seadog saved both their lives? It was the least they could do.

  Warily, both equipped with firearms, the mistress and her apprentice chanced into the backstreets – and found themselves following a winding trail of blood. Mrs. Martha thought this ghoulish and revolting, and advised they turn back, but Harry felt certain this blood was not Kaplain’s. By the boy’s reckoning, there could only be one of the monsters remaining, and Joseph Kaplain was more than a match for any monster on its own. The trail led them at length to the quays, down a flight of mossy steps and onto the damp sands below the water-break. At this point the turgid liquid was absorbed, but there were footprints aplenty – a scattered, confused mass, which wandered higgledly-piggledy but led finally down to the edge of the sea.

  Harry and Mrs. Martha stood by the waterline. In the darkness of midnight only faint, moonlit ripples were visible. Nothing else could be seen, either floating or swimming. Aside from the distant toll of a buoy-bell, scarcely a sound was heard.

  “He must have taken a boat?” Mrs. Martha said at length, but Harry shook his head.

  He didn’t know what had happened here for certain, but, for some odd reason, a chilling picture was unfolding in his mind: Kaplain, laughing in that cruel, slightly crazed way of his, walking in pursuit as the last of the amphibians struggled down the narrow passages to the sea, mortally wounded by half a dozen sword-cuts; Kaplain still slashing at the beast – hard, steady strokes, drawing ever more blood but never cutting deeply enough to kill; Kaplain arriving by the water, and breaking open his volley gun to casually reload it; Kaplain wading out to thigh-depth as his victim tried vainly to flounder away; Kaplain raising the gun to his shoulder, laughing again – and suddenly calling out in fear as all around him the surface began to boil and a hundred amphibious forms emerged, their webbed hands reaching up at his belt and lapels, at his collar-capes and side-whiskers, seizing hold with grips of iron, mercilessly hauling him down, ignoring his struggles, ignoring his volley gun as it blasted harmlessly into the night-sky …

  “Harry?” Mrs. Martha said. “You’re white as death.”

  He gazed at her, unable to answer.

  She placed an arm around him and steered him back up the beach. “It’s hardly surprising,” she said. “We’ll get the doctor first thing. That arm must be tended to.”

  The boy went with her quietly. He didn’t once look back – at least, not then.

  *

  Master’s Log, May 22nd 1879

  Our patron is again on deck, watching the Atlantic. Always, he watches the Atlantic.

  I expressed concern about this over dinner. He doesn’t look to be in the best of health, and taking into account his age, constant exposure to rain and spume will only do damage to him. But he will entertain no other course. Many times I’ve tried to explain how the circular tides have been low for the best part of thirty years, and that the infamous Sargasso weed has broken up into fragments, most of which have drifted far apart. Any ancient hulks once caught up in it will long have sunk to the bottom. Yet he continues his daily vigil.

  Even if the weed banks had once been reality rather than fable, I’ve advised him that the mysterious ‘Shrieking Sailor’ can surely be nought but myth. That weird emaciated creature, allegedly bound naked to the high foremast of some derelict man-o-war lodged deep in the Sargasso greenery, where he weeps and wails the passing years, is a typical tale of the sea, more likely fiction than fact.

  My patron-passenger refuses to comment. Either on this matter or anything else. For a successful captain of industry, he is often quiet and introspective. It may be that he has other motives for these constant voyages to the heart of the Atlantic, but personally I doubt it. At night, when he halts conversation at dinner, alert to the cries of an albatross or the distant groan of a surfacing whale, he is clearly listening for something.

  What that might be, and why, are questions perhaps that it’s better not to ask.

  FOR WE ARE MANY

  The soldiers took Flavia straight to the dismem
berment block. It was a huge hunk of wood on a stone pedestal, enclosed within a ten-foot timber palisade. Its crude surface bore many abrasions where heavy blades had bitten into it. The numerous dark stains on it were still damp, the sawdust scattered around its base spattered crimson. They shut the gate, and left her in there for a full hour. During that time she could do nothing but stare at the block, and the marks it bore, or walk around it and try to find solace in prayer. Eventually, she sank onto her haunches and hugged her knees to her breast. She was weak with fear and hunger, and as only a thin linen shift covered her nakedness, trembling in the chill spring air flowing down from the Welsh mountains.

  When they finally came to collect her, she was close to fainting. Praetorians being Praetorians, they spared little thought for that. Flavia was nudged and kicked until she rose, and then taken stumbling back into the court, where the magistrate could continue his examination. He was a thin, angular-faced man, who peered down from over his high desk like a vulture. Only his white, purple-trimmed toga, and the laurel leaves clasping his bronze curls, gave any hint of his important office.

  “You’ve seen what awaits you if you persist in this nonsense?” he said.

  She nodded feebly.

  “You perhaps don’t believe it could happen to you?”

  Flavia said nothing, though more through exhaustion than impertinence.

  “Three others started the week thinking that,” the magistrate added. “They are now fertilising ground-lilies.”

  “My lord … I know the risks I face.”

  “Risks, madam? I would call them certainties.”

  “I can’t do what you ask. I would if I could, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t? Can’t! In the name of all the gods, girl, you need only go down to the pantheon and throw incense on a fire. Tribune Maximion will escort you and provide witness. Within half an hour, your liberty will be secured. Will your god even notice you have done this thing?”